tasting your heartbeat
by lokogato-sama
Summary: Hiei has six senses, and with them he can choose to feel. As Minamono Shuichi’s body demonizes, Hiei finds he might actually miss some aspects of it. KH.


Loko: Demons have no heartbeat? Strange, isn't it? And as Kurama's human body retains more and more demonic aura, does it go away? Weird …

Kurama: …

Hiei: …

Summary: Hiei has six senses, and with them he can choose to feel. As Minamono Shuichi's body demonizes, Hiei finds he might actually miss some aspects of it. KH.

Disclaimer::glances around: Um … no. Not yet.

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tasting your heartbeat

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Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've got a call.

Sylvia Plath

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Kurama smells like earth.

It's only to be expected – most demons smell of their element. Hiei smells like burning things.

Kurama smells like earth, and life, and not green growing but blue pulsing. He smells like aura – like reiki, spirit force, and life force.

Someday Hiei will to bury his face in the place where Kurama's neck joins his shoulders, and breathe. Kurama will laugh, either from the absurdness of the situation, or because Hiei's hair will tickle him, or because he's happy, or all three.

Hiei pretends that he will inhale life.

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Kurama is soft to the touch, except where he has developed calluses from a whip handle.

His face is smooth and eternally young – or will be, when Minamono Shuichi finishes becoming Kurama. The tender skin under his chin is soft and fragrant, and sometimes Hiei stares at it and wonders what it would be like to kiss it, bite it, bruise it, tongue over vulnerable pulse, hands wound in masses of crimson.

He wonders also how it would feel to tangle his hands in Kurama's hair. It will be heavy to hold, but silken soft, sliding easily through his fingers and falling back to gravity.

When Hiei finally gives up all pretense, snags Kurama by his hair, and kisses him, he finds that it is in fact not soft or silky, but tangled and careless. Kurama doesn't really take care of his hair. It looks fine anyway. Hiei's hands stay stationary in the scarlet tresses, caught by a million snags and strands.

As Kurama kisses back, Hiei finds that he really doesn't mind.

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Kurama tastes like passion.

Hiei can't really define it. If pressed, he might manage that Kurama tastes something like life – something like growing things – something like fire – something like – well, _something_.

It's passion, and Hiei recognizes it. Kurama is brilliantly alive, in the way his eyes glow green and his hair burns red and his skin is almost always warm. It is in the way Kurama laughs and the million millions of nuances and ways Kurama can say "Hiei."

Kurama lives – stealing, killing, loving, dying, he lives. And he tastes like it. He tastes like he has kissed a thousand different people and their tastes have become mingled together in his mouth and over his skin, and when he blinks his dusky eyelashes and laughs as Hiei asks him if he _has_ kissed a thousand different people, Hiei can see it.

Hiei hates being jealous, but Kurama belongs to _him_.

He doesn't mind, though, if Kurama still tastes the same.

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Kurama looks deadly all the time.

Sometimes Hiei slips in through the window late on a school night, and he will find Kurama curled up in the blankets or, more often than not, fast asleep over his homework. It makes Hiei laugh to think of _the_ Kurama doing schoolwork, but before he can begin mocking he becomes caught up in the way the moonlight hits Kurama's face.

It doesn't soften. Nothing could soften Kurama's features – so it is probably just as well that he is delicately built.

The white light brings into sharp relief the depth of the eyes and gives the illusion of almost hollow cheeks. Yes, Kurama looks deadly, but he also looks _dead_.

And suddenly Hiei is terrified, and he kisses Kurama awake, desperate for life. The moon turns Kurama into some creature of moonsilk and blood on the floor and over Hiei's hands as he runs them through the thick bangs.

Kurama laughs, and Hiei watches his throat move and his hands tilt Hiei's face back for a _proper_ kiss.

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Kurama's heartbeat is slowing.

Actually, it's not _Kurama's_ heartbeat, exactly. It's Minamono Shuichi's. As Kurama's body retains more and more of its original demonic aura, gaining power as Kurama had planned, it is demonizing. Slowly it is becoming more dangerous, more indestructible, more demonic.

Which means that his heartbeat will slow, fade, and stop. Demons don't have hearts to beat.

Hiei won't admit it, but he likes to listen to Kurama – Shuichi's – heartbeat. In moments of tenderness, which are rare, he allows himself to rest his head against Kurama's chest, where the slow but sure thud of a human heart reminds him that Kurama is alive. Hiei's sensitive ears can actually pick it up a few feet away. He will _never _admit it, but he likes the way it speeds and trips when Kurama arches his back and moans.

Kurama will still look like Shuichi when he has finished changing, but his body will be different.

Hiei asked, once, if Kurama would still have a heartbeat. Kurama had looked startled, then unsure, and promised to look it up.

Hiei won't admit it, but he's afraid Kurama's heart will die along with its rhythmic thudding. Without a heart, a being can't love … right?

Hiei won't admit it, but he's in love with Kurama.

Kurama came back one day and informed Hiei that yes, his heart would stop beating.

So Hiei listens carefully every chance he gets, waiting for when Kurama's heart will die and when Kurama will leave.

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Sometimes Hiei can forget that he has a third eye. Ningenkai will do that to him.

Kurama's mind is generally well-shielded, but recently Hiei finds that Kurama has stopped shielding. Once, as a bit of a joke and a bit more of a threat, Hiei poked at Kurama's mind with his Jagan, and found it open.

Kurama had stared at him, expression unreadable, and Hiei had ventured in.

Blood, and tears, and avarice. Demon's mind.

Beauty, and life, and happiness. Human's mind.

Blood, and happiness, and beauty, and avarice, and life is tears. Kurama's mind.

Hiei looked. When Kurama asked him what he found, Hiei had carefully withdrawn, shaken.

"You … love …?" He'd asked, afraid even to finish the sentence.

Kurama had rolled his eyes, looking exasperated. "Of course," He had said. "Why else would I still be here?"

Hiei had blinked slowly, unable to comprehend this. Kurama had sighed and kissed him.

When Kurama's heartbeat dies, Hiei will look into his mind again.

He knows what he will find.

-owari-

words: 1055

paragraphs: 53

sentences: 85

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:glance left and right: We're safe … :molest Sleeping!Kurama-sama! Eeks:: Wait … do you smell something burning? That's not us, is it … ? Agh! No! Bad Hiei! _Bad Hiei!_

Please REVIEW to save our butts, and possibly Kurama-sama's hair, from the evil burny Hiei of dOOm.

Arigato!

REVIEW! We thrive on them. :nod:

lokogato enterprises ltd.

9:42 PM

13-04-05


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